


In Case of Emergency, Break Glass

by JungMichan



Category: K-pop, SHINee
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Romance, Slice of Life, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25966618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JungMichan/pseuds/JungMichan
Summary: Taemin has two problems.The first problem is that he is late for work. He is the kind of late that can get even a decent staff member, an employee-of-the-year type person, seriously fired, and Taemin is not that kind of staff member. He is the kind of staff member who is on his final warning, and who has been told in no uncertain terms that if he is late even once more this year, his ass will be fired, no matter how prettily he can construct canapes.He is late for work because he is bored with kissing Naeun. This is Taemin’s second problem. A problem for him, and also, apparently, a problem for Naeun.
Relationships: Choi Minho/Lee Taemin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22
Collections: Summer of SHINee Round 2





	In Case of Emergency, Break Glass

Taemin has two problems.

The first problem is that he is late for work. He is the kind of late that can get even a decent staff member, an employee-of-the-year type person, seriously fired, and Taemin is not that kind of staff member. He is the kind of staff member who is on his final warning, and who has been told in no uncertain terms that if he is late even once more this year, his ass will be fired, no matter how prettily he can construct canapes.

He is late for work because he is bored with kissing Naeun. This is Taemin’s second problem. A problem for him, and also, apparently, a problem for Naeun. 

His boss’s name is Lee Jinki. Taemin likes Jinki a lot, despite the multiple threats of ass-firing he has received from him. Take right now, for example. They stand on the sidewalk in the fading evening, about to cross a large expanse of immaculately groomed lawn and tamed-tree driveway and enter the enormous mansion at the crest of the rising ground. Not only is Jinki not firing his ass on the spot, despite the fact that Taemin has shown up an hour (an hour!) late to their most important job all season; he is wearing a lace-trimmed apron and offering to carry his crate. “Stack it on top of mine,” he says, nodding at the one already in his arms.

“I’m fine,” says Taemin, though his knees are close to buckling, close to all-out giving way, and they haven’t even started walking yet. What has Jinki packed in this thing? A complete set of china? China itself?

“Are you sure you can manage?”

A metre away from them, perched neatly on the low front wall that leads out from the elaborate double gate, Kibum sighs. He’s always sitting down on things, is Kibum, whenever he gets a second, as if life is just too wearying to stand up under for long. He has a habit of holding himself just a little aloof, a little distant, a little outside of the action. This way, he can be easily observed in all his beauty; he can be properly seen. 

He turns to face them, and the dusting of glitter on his eyelids sheds splinters of light into the dusk. He says to Jinki, “If you want to carry another one so much, take mine.” Briefly he breaches his personal bubble to haul his crate up from the wall beside him and slide it on top of Jinki’s before stepping back again.

Jinki absorbs the extra weight with a grunt and adjusts his balance. “Let’s go.”

They commence their ascent of the driveway.

They are a slow local train clattering through the growing dark. Jinki in front of Taemin in front of Kibum, the _Shinee Catering_ dream team. Jinki is the locomotive, his robust strength pulling all three of them forwards. He takes occasional halts to shift his load; the train stopping at the local stations. A falling curtain of stray brown bangs blocks Taemin’s vision, so that he ploughs his crate into Jinki’s back whenever he stops. Clinking jars perform a percussion solo inside the crate.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry.”

Kibum’s walking lightly, almost floating behind them. “It was your girlfriend who held you up? Is that what you said, Tae-Tae?” His liberation from crate-carrying has made him chatty.

Taemin attempts to blow the hair from his eyes. “Yes.”

“Why? What happened?”

Taemin would like to avoid the question, but all his energy is focused on the steepness of the driveway and the bulk of his load dragging at his skinny arms and cutting into his fingers. “We had a fight.”

“Oh, too bad,” Kibum says. His voice is light and twinkling as a jewelled butterfly. 

Kibum irritates Taemin, for obvious reasons. What isn’t so obvious to Taemin is how Naeun knows about the problem with the kissing. It’s not like Taemin has told her he finds it boring. He is good at lying to his girlfriend. “That was amazing. _You_ are amazing,” he always says when the kissing is over. He has always thought it the perfect response - admiring, affectionate, not too effusive. It has always worked perfectly up to now.

But this afternoon, on her couch, as Taemin was tying his long fine hair back into a silky ponytail and returning the cushions to their proper places, Naeun said, “You say that every single time.”

Taemin plumped up a cushion, tried to keep the alarm out of his voice. “Because I mean it. Because it’s true.”

“It sounds…” she trailed off.

“What?”

“Robotic. I mean, like you’re an actual robot.”

“I know what robotic means, Naeun.”

“Like the words have been programmed into your system and you’re just spitting them back out every time without feeling a single thing.”

She began to cry.

As the tears of Naeun spilled over and rolled down her cheeks, a hole began to grow in Taemin’s stomach. It was flame touching paper; it expanded inside of him, black-rimmed and flickering. It was failure, it was guilt, it was suffocation. The only thing Taemin could think of to make it stop was to start kissing Naeun again.

So he did.

He took her hands and ran his thumbs along the sides of them. She liked it when he did that. He breathed into her mouth and stroked her hair. And eventually she kissed him back. Quite a lot.

Which was what had delayed his arrival at work.

Finally Jinki reaches the top of the driveway and stops. Taemin and Kibum roll up behind him, carriages clunking to a halt. There’s a click like a camera shutter and an ornate lamp-post by the door blazes on. They blink against it.

“Whoa,” breathes Kibum. “This place is…”

“Yup,” says Jinki, his voice turned soft.

The house is huge, four storeys at least. The roof is so far up the night has claimed it. Rows of windows glow out into the dusk, warm and golden. Fluted columns support the porch, through which wide glass doors beckon. And the garden! Fountains and glimmering pools, swooping paths lined with flowering trees, wisteria-wreathed lattices, expanses of velvety grass. Weeks ago Jinki told them who owns this place and what the event is, but now that he actually wants to know, Taemin has forgotten.

They file around the side of the house and through a service door. Jinki puts down his crates and rolls his neck. He pats the wall besides the crates, as if to reassure it. _No thieves here! Just honest caterers, running (a mere!) sixty minutes late._ At last, light blooms to reveal the kitchen. They pause a moment to take it in. Convection oven. Gold-veined white marble countertops. Two sinks. A gleaming flat-top grill. An industrial espresso machine.

“These people are loaded, right?” Kibum leans against the central island of the same gold-veined marble and casts a cat-like gaze around. “Like, private jet, garage of Ferraris, own a tropical island-loaded, right? Right, Jinki?”

Jinki must be stressed out, because he doesn’t answer and Jinki always answers everyone; he is the politest person Taemin knows. He realises it is likely Taemin making them an hour late that is stressing his boss out, and guiltily he moves to help unpack the crates. The empty kitchen surfaces are quickly claimed by the well-oiled _Shinee Catering_ dream team.

“Has anyone seen the peri-peri sauce?” Jinki asks when all the containers have been unpacked and assembled.

Kibum tosses his silky blonde hair and gazes into the middle distance; he is a lead singer and this is his music video. “Yes, I saw it,” he says with great calmness.

“Where?”

“I don’t recall. It was a peri-peri long time ago.”

Jinki looks like he might spontaneously combust, which is not like him at all.

“I’ll check the van,” Taemin says quickly.

\--

Taemin takes the other exit, the front way into the hall. Here the ceiling is high and patterned, and the walls sprout plaster archways painted with gold leaf. He passes a painting that looks familiar. He stops to peer at it. He’s pretty sure it’s the original of a print in Naeun’s parent’s living room.

Oh, Naeun. It’s not that Taemin doesn’t think she’s great. Objectively she is _really_ great. It’s just that when they kiss, his mind drifts. He finds himself wondering when it will be over, so that he can do something more fun.

Lately he has been thinking this: _Maybe kissing is not my thing._

He has also been thinking: _Maybe I have a condition. A lip malfunction. The nerves in my mouth do not connect to the pleasure centres in my brain._

And he has been thinking: _Maybe kissing is actually inherently boring, and the whole kissing thing is a global conspiracy that everyone knows about but me._

He has even been thinking: _Or maybe it is only Naeun. I can’t rule out kissing full stop on the basis of a single person. Yes, she is great. She has a lovely smile. Piles of incredible hair. She makes me laugh. She is smart. Kind. Pretty. But there are bad things too. Like the way she buys me socks with Disney characters on them and expects me to actually wear them. I mean, Disney socks? Disney?_

Making him wear Disney socks is a justifiable barrier to enjoying kissing, surely. He should try kissing other people before making up his mind.

Not that he _hasn’t_ tried.

There was Kana. She kissed with her teeth.

And Sunmi. It was enjoyable at first with Sunmi, but after three weeks Taemin found himself doing science homework in his head. _Hydrogen, helium_ (lips on lips), _lithium, beryllium_ . _Boron, carbon_ (tongue on tongue), _nitrogen, oxygen._

Which leaves him...where? Ruling out kissing altogether, when he is barely seventeen? What comes next - ruling out sex? Simply because he has never longed to have it with his objectively sexy girlfriend?

There’s a shadow at the end of the hallway. Taemin watches it until it becomes a man walking towards him. He remembers he is a caterer, and caterers are not people, they are useful automatons performing a specific set of tasks. They should be in the kitchen, not here in this private, opulent part of the house, in this original-artwork gallery.

He searches for a doorway, but the walls on either side go on and on. Then he sees a red velvet curtain a little way up the hall. He hurries towards it, slips a hand through. His fingers meet air. He pushes the curtain aside and ducks behind it.

“Hello.”

Taemin chokes back a scream. Someone is in here - standing right next to him. In black tuxedo pants, a white dress shirt and a brown bow-tie with tiny blue swallows on it. Taemin’s hand goes to his chest. 

“Sorry if I surprised you.” He is smiling, this someone, this person who looks not much older than Taemin, who is taller than him, who has a mop of shaggy black hair and large dark eyes.

Taemin exhales. “That’s okay. I didn’t expect to find anyone in here, that’s all.”

“What are you after?”

“Huh?”

“What, or who, are you looking for?”

There is the sound of footsteps. Taemin puts a finger to his lips, goes very still. His companion arches his eyebrows and falls silent. Together they listen to the man pass. They hear the soft beat of his shoes on the thick runner. 

Their eyes meet.

And Taemin recognizes him. His lips part and his eyes go wide as he takes in every detail of his face. Even here, where the only light in this strange little curtained-off alcove is a dim safety bulb jutting from the wall, he can see the deep liquid brown of his eyes and the little flecks of gold in them. His straight nose, his high cheekbones, his long hands. The graceful tendons of his neck, the sharp angulation of his jaw.

When Taemin was a little boy, he had an imaginary friend, as many children do. His name was Choi Minho, and he was a boy just like Taemin, but with one very important difference; he had a pair of beautiful feathered wings that sprouted from his shoulder-blades. He wasn’t an angel, Taemin knew that, though the only people with wings he’d ever seen were angels in pictures. No, Minho was more like a bird.

Minho was invisible to everyone else, but to Taemin, he was very, very real, and much better company than any other kid. In second grade Taemin’s family had moved, and at his new school Taemin had somehow become popular, and Minho had slowly come to him less and less, until one day he had stopped coming altogether. Taemin has not thought of Minho in a long time.

“Are you here for the party?” Minho whispers to Taemin when the footsteps have gone.

Taemin tries to get a grip. _No,_ he’s thinking. _No._

This cannot be Minho. 

It is coincidence that he looks so similar to the boy Taemin imagined. It is coincidence that this beautiful youth who seems just a little older than Taemin looks exactly, perfectly, just how he would have expected Minho to look when he grew up. It is coincidence that his eyes sparkle in just the same way and that his presence feels exactly the same. All the same, he cannot stop himself looking for his wings. Those beautiful, incredible, brown-feathered wings.

Those wings could not fit in an alcove so small as this.

Belatedly, Taemin remembers that he has been asked a question. “No,” he answers. “I’m with the catering company.”

“Oh, okay.” A quick grin. “What are you feeding the vultures?”

“The vultures?”

“The guests.”

“Uh,” says Taemin. He tries to remember Jinki’s menu. Recently he’s become obsessed with a well-known chef whose name, right this minute, escapes Taemin. Sustainability is this chef’s big thing, which means it’s Jinki’s new big thing, too. And because he sources their produce from local growers now, there are always last-minute changes to the menu. “Finger food, basically,” Taemin tells the boy who cannot be Choi Minho. “Are _you_ a guest?”

“Not even slightly. But I made sure to disguise myself as one.” The boy pats the sleeves of his dress shirt and grins. “It’s not every day you get to wear a bow tie, is it?”

“I suppose not,” Taemin says.

He should leave, now that the man has passed by. Jinki needs his peri-peri sauce, and he has already cost him an hour. Yet Taemin hesitates. There is something about being in this alcove. About this boy within it. Strange, yes. So strange it makes his heart thump against his ribs and reality seems to shiver around his edges. But still. It makes him want to stay in here.

He notices a little box attached to the back wall. It is glass fronted and has red metal sides. Behind the glass is a small red handle. In white letters across the glass are the words: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS.

“What do you think happens if you pull the handle?” Taemin asks the boy.

The boy follows his gaze. “Haven’t you seen one of those before?”

“I don’t think so.”

The boy cups his chin in his finger and thumb, looks serious. “A flood,” he says. “You pull the handle, and the skies open up and it rains like it hasn’t rained for a thousand years.”

“Right,” Taemin says slowly.

The boy tilts his head. His eyes glitter in the dimness. “The dead come alive,” he says. “Their eyes blink open. They rise up.” His expression turns mischievous. “Want to try it? Want to break the glass?”

“But it’s not an emergency.”

“Right,” the boy says, smiling. “I’m Minho, by the way. Choi Minho.”

Taemin’s heart gives one solid thump, so hard his whole body jolts, and the world jolts with it.

_A coincidence..._

“Taemin,” he says, and brushes his too-long bangs to the side with a less-than-steady hand. “Lee Taemin.”

Minho gazes at him, and Taemin’s skin tingles. He grips the red curtain and pushes it aside. “I…I better get back to work.”

Taemin exits the alcove, follows the hall to the front of the house. He finds the grand front entrance, walks through it. Down the garden to the street, along the street to the black van with the pink and gold wreathed writing on the side. _Shinee Catering._ In the back of the van lies the solitary peri-peri sauce bottle on its side, red contents bleeding from its squeeze-top like a victim of unspeakable violence. He picks it up gingerly, trying not to get blood (no, sauce) on his fingers. 

He reaches the house, the bleeding bottle held carefully in front of him, just as the vultures start to arrive; tuxes, gowns, diamonds and heels. Television crews are setting up cameras on the grass. The vultures climb the front steps to the stage-like porch, take small turns towards each other and the cameras, a vision of sparkle and colour. The energy ripples off them and pushes into his mouth when he breathes, and it seems to Taemin that it tastes of electricity. He swallows it and sidles round the edges.

When he’s back in the quiet hallway he feels it travelling through him, an electric rope that writhes, restless, inside him. He enters the kitchen and hands Jinki the sauce. 

“What’s this party for again?”

Jinki is arranging canapes on a serving tray, half-strawberry boats with white cheddar cabins and smoked salmon sails on a cocktail-stick mast. Beside him, Kibum is draped over the marble-top island, the hand of his outstretched arm holding his phone as he takes an artistic close-up for the _Shinee Catering_ SNS feed. Kibum is the kind of person fashion brands give free stuff to so he’ll take selfies in their clothes. He sometimes gets champagne. Hotel rooms. Once, he told Taemin, an Italian label flew him to Hawaii to lie shirtless on the sand with their sunglasses poised on his bladed nose.

Which could even be true. What would Taemin know?

“I told you already,” Jinki says without looking up. “The house belongs to Lee Sooman.”

“Who?”

“Oh, Tae-Tae,” Kibum’s blonde head shakes in disappointment. “Lee Sooman, the investor. How can you not know him?”

“Why should I?” Taemin asks, indignant.

“Because he’s always in the media, that’s why,” says Kibum.

“Why is he always in the media?”

“Because that’s what happens when you are stinking rich,” says Kibum. “People want to know about you. They want to know what you do.” 

Jinki adjusts one of his strawberry boats with a careful finger. “Lee Sooman is the guy behind the Hushan Dam project,” he tells Taemin. “That’s why they’re celebrating tonight. They finally got the green light. There’s been some kind of controversy, I think. I can’t remember why.” He hands him a spoon. “Put aioli in these bowls. Kibum’s just done a serving round. When you’ve finished the aioli I’ll send you back out with him.”

Taemin takes the lid off the aioli container, and the door from the hallway opens. 

He looks up, the electric rope in his stomach dancing. The boy from the alcove? Minho?

But it’s not Minho. Instead, a different young man saunters in. He has strong, spare features and golden-brown skin almost the exact same shade as his hair. He has a glass of red wine in hand, and he looks around in a proprietary fashion, like he owns the kitchen. 

This is what they’re like, these men who follow Kibum back. There’s at least one at every party. This one settles himself on a stool by the marble-top island, near where Kibum currently sprawls, his slender torso draped over the marble, pale limbs an arrangement of perfection. Kibum lifts his head to look at him and smiles patiently, before lowering his head back down and closing his eyes again.

“I wouldn’t mind tasting another of those scallops,” the man says to Taemin.

“It’s chicken next,” says Jinki, his eyes still on his arrangement. “Then these strawberry boats. We’ll bring out more scallops after that.”

“No worries. I’m happy to wait.” The golden-brown man swirls his wine. He eyes Kibum. “Nice set-up, this, isn’t it?” He remarks in his direction.

“Hmmm,” Kibum replies. He languidly undrapes himself from the island and tosses his hair expertly so the blonde strands ripple into place. He smiles at the man kindly; says, “Ready, Tae-Tae?”

\--

In the party room, Kibum is the first to empty his tray. This is how it always goes. People are drawn into his orbit, they circle around him, admiring his deft choreography - light twirl, perfect smile, just the right words, repeat. They peck at his tray with their fingertips, they gaze admiringly at his radiant face. Half of Taemin’s job is just waiting for Kibum to run out of food. 

When Kibum has returned to the kitchen for another tray, Taemin offers seconds. The guests barely glance at him. He does three circuits of the room before heading back to the hallway, his tray still half-full.

He sees the velvet curtain of the alcove up ahead. He wonders if Minho is still behind it.

He reaches the curtain. “Hello?” he whispers. “It’s, um, it’s Taemin. The caterer.”

The curtain ripples. Minho’s face peeps out. “Well, this is unexpectedly good service.” He reaches out an arm and draws Taemin in.

His arms. Taemin stares at them. Minho has rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. All the way down to his wrists, it is like something from an old natural history bookplate. Inked in red, in blue, in green, in yellow, they are flying and perching, some with their beaks open, others holding twigs or worms. They are small, large, in nests, on the forest floor, on branches.

“Birds,” Taemin breathes.

Minho looks straight at him. Taemin is grateful the light is so bad, because his face is suddenly burning. He sets his tray down with unsteady fingers and tries to think of something to say. “My boss says the guy who owns this house is, is an...an investor? He says he’s involved in some kind of controversy.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Apparently it’s been in the media.”

“I don’t follow the media,” Minho says.

“Not any of it?”

“No.”

“Me either.”

They look at each other, Taemin and Minho, without speaking.

Minho picks up one of Jinki’s strawberry boats with cheddar cabins and smoked salmon sails and begins delicately deconstructing it with his teeth. The pink slip of salmon goes into his mouth. His jaw shifts beneath his skin. He swallows.

Taemin stares. “Are - are they special types of birds, the ones on your arms?”

“I’ll tell you about them, if you like.” Minho leans close, his breath hot at Taemin’s ear, and says:

“First, think of flying, Your feathered wings, your hollow-boned body, fragile-strong, arrow-straight. High above everything, the wind is your way; let it lift you. Let it carry you to your home, to the juniper, the hawthorn, the Manchurian fir. Look for the place where you can safely flit down into the leaf litter, where the insects and grubs are sweet. Call your friends. Go on. Sing it like a bell.”

Is it a story, Taemin wonders, or a poem? Is it something in-between? Whatever it is, the words are making him breathless. He leans in. How curious, the way his body is feeling, this close to Minho. So warm and bright. The electric rope inside him is sprouting like a branch, connecting every part of him to every other part. He wants to be closer still. He wants the space between their arms, their hands, their legs, their mouths, to disappear.

“Your wings are tiring. Look harder for your home, because soon you will need to land. Look for your trees. It will be night soon. You are tired but you have to keep flying, because you have not found them yet. The air will not hold you forever. Where is your home? Where are your trees? You have to find the trees, though they are gone. You have to find them, though they have been destroyed. You have to find them before the night.”

Minho falls silent. His breath is no longer warm on Taemin’s ear. In its absence Taemin feels the cold air on every side of him, with nothing to hold him up.

He gazes at Minho, and Minho gazes back, and the force of his gaze makes Taemin’s chest heave.

He looks away, towards the red metal box.

Minho laughs softly. “You really want to know what that does, don’t you?” He starts to roll down his sleeves, hiding the birds from sight. “You want to know what will happen if you pull the handle. Okay, then. What will happen is this.” 

He holds a cuff button between two fingers and pushes it through its hole. “The people will speak in rhyme.” He slowly leans closer toTaemin, places his lips half an inch from his hair, and Taemin’s entire body beats. “The whole word will disappear, and it will be just us left.”

\--

Taemin feels dizzy as he walks back to the kitchen. When he goes in, Jinki is bending over a whole trout on a long silver serving dish, delicately garnishing it with his special herb sauce. Kibum is plugged into his phone, washing crystal glasses, dancing between the two sinks to a tune no one else can hear. The golden-brown man from the party is still lounging on his stool, swirling his wine around the glass.

“Finally, Taemin,” Jinki says. “I’ve been waiting to tell you. I remembered the controversy from the media. About our friends out there.”

“What about your friend in here?” says the man on the bar stool. His voice is sleepy, affectionate.

Jinki looks up from the fish and smiles. “Want to taste some of this?” he says to the man. Without waiting for an answer, he makes a small cut in the side of the trout, scoops some fish and herb sauce onto a paper-thin cracker, and hands it to him. 

The man takes it and eats it.

Jinki never offers food to Kibum’s hangers-on. Taemin wonders what he’s not understanding.

“The reason the Hushan Dam they’re all celebrating tonight is controversial,” Jinki continues, “is because it’s going to destroy the habitat of some endangered birds.”

Taemin feels a pulse in his throat.

“A species called the fairy pitta,” says Jinki.

Taemin feels suddenly cold.

“If I’d remembered that when they’d booked us, I wouldn’t have accepted this job. Sickening how people will destroy nature for money.”

Jinki turns away from the trout to wipe his hands on a tea towel, and the fish props up its head, dripping herb sauce. It catches Taemin’s eye and winks.

Taemin’s jaw goes slack. “Jinki…”

Jinki turns around. Taemin’s voice sounded strange even to himself. “What is it?”

But when he looks again the fish is back in position, patterns of herb sauce undisturbed. Shakily he presses the back of his hand to his forehead. “Never mind.”

“By the way,” Jinki picks up a knife and begins to slice a lemon into thin wedges. “This is Kim Jonghyun.” He nods at the golden-brown man on the stool.

 _That’s_ the name he couldn’t remember earlier. Kim Jonghyun is Jinki’s chef idol. The one with a passion for sustainable farming, with five-star restaurants in three cities. What is he doing here?

“Pleased to meet you,” Jonghyun says to Taemin.

Jinki grins. “I emailed him last week,” he explains, “and suggested he sneak in tonight and check out our food.”

“And I’m glad I did,” says Jonghyun.

Jinki beams.

“Do you want to tell him, or shall I?” Jonghyun asks Jinki.

“Go ahead,” Jinki says, grinning.

Jonghyun places down his wine glass and folds his elegant golden-brown hands. “This boss of yours knows how to cook a fish,” he says. “I love his mix of chilli, lime and chive. I’ve never tasted quite so fresh a dish. Beneath his hand it really comes alive. New talent is a thing I like to watch, and there’s a special project I’ve in mind. To take this city’s dining up a notch - I see it as my gift to humankind.”

Taemin presses his fingers to his temples. The air around him shivers.

“We’re killing off the earth! We’ve got to stop it,” Jonghyun continues. “A different way of farming’s the solution. My new place is an ethical non-profit, with proceeds going to help curb our pollution. As chef, Jinki will nail it, I’ve no doubt. Just look at what he did with that damn trout!”

Taemin thinks: _It’s happened. I have finally lost my mind._

He picks up a crystal wine glass Kibum has washed and walks slowly to the sink. He fills it with water and drinks. When he has finished, he puts the glass down and without saying a word to anyone, he walks out of the kitchen. He can hear the party down the hall - people laughing and talking over one another, the tap of silver on crystal. The voices settle down. Someone’s about to make a speech.

He reaches the alcove, opens the red velvet curtain, and there is Minho, holding a small mallet.

“What have you done?” Taemin cries.

Minho is completely still; only his eyes flicker. “Nothing,” he says. “Not yet, anyway.”

“You smashed the glass,” Taemin says. “You pulled the handle.”

“No.”

“Yes, you did!”

“No, I didn’t. Not yet.”

Taemin stares at the unbroken glass. “What did you say before? About the dead rising up?” The winking fish flaps brightly in his mind. “About people speaking in rhyme?”

“Oh, that,” says Minho. “That was just a joke.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“What about the flood? The rain? The world disappearing?”

Minho shrugs. “If you don’t believe me…” He hands Taemin the mallet.

Taemin stares at his own fingers gripping it.

“If you won’t do it, I will,” says Minho, his voice suddenly firm. “It’s time.”

_Time?_

Taemin eyes the red metal box with its white letters across the glass pane. His arms feel light, somehow. They feel feathered and expansive. He lifts up the mallet. He smashes it into the glass.

It shatters into a waterfall of pebbles.

There is the handle, within reach of his fingers.

Minho and Taemin stare at it.

“Go on,” Minho’s voice is close and soft. “Pull it.”

Taemin reaches into the frame; Minho slips an arm around his waist. He grips the handle; Minho grips his hips. He pulls the handle down and turns around; Minho pulls him in.

And the world disappears.

Minho is kissing him. He is kissing Taemin. Lips on lips. Tongue on tongue. Taemin sees white, white breath, white heat. He feels a pulse in his mouth, in his throat, through his body, every part of it. He is flying. He runs a hand through Minho’s hair, pressing hard through the softness. He runs his palms down Minho’s sides, to his hips, then lower, lower. Minho lets out a groan, and it sparks through Taemin like a firework.

Where even are they? What even exists besides this?

Minho’s hands are on his face, his neck, his sides. One flutters at Taemin’s waist. Slips into the front of his jeans. 

The world floods.

Is it raining? An alarm is blaring. They pull apart. How much time has passed? Their hair is wet, their shoes and clothes. Minho presses his hands flat over his ears. “The sprinklers!” He shouts above the noise of the alarm. “Come on!”

Taemin runs into the hall, where the ceiling jets are spraying water onto the rich carpet, the furniture, the paintings. His shoes squelch as he races towards the front of the house with Minho next to him. “So that’s what it does!” He shouts, and Minho grins, grips him around the waist again, plants a kiss on his neck. Taemin feels elation press at his chest. They follow the party crowd, tumble out and down the front steps and into the garden that’s flooded with light from the house. Taemin feels a sudden breeze at his right shoulder, hears a sound like the slap of a Chinese fan against the air.

He turns. Minho is gone.

He looks around. On the grass, people are milling in groups, in sodden dresses, jackets and shoes. He finds Jinki and Kibum standing together near a concrete fountain. Jinki has a paring knife in one hand and his wet hair is plastered to his forehead. “What a mess,” he says.

Taemin scans the crowd for Minho.

Kibum is twirling, his damp apron slapping against his legs. He slows. “What’s that?” He asks, and points.

Taemin looks up. At the edge of the roof, a large roll of canvas perches. A shadow flutters at one corner. There is the sound of a sail snapping stiff in the wind. The canvas rolls open and down the side of the house, blocking three front windows.

SAVE THE FAIRY PITTA it says in bold, black-stroked characters.

The winged shadow takes off from the roof, a black dart shooting upwards, until it is swallowed by the night.

The TV crews scramble to their cameras.

The crowd is thinning out quickly, the vultures suddenly reluctant to be filmed. Someone races across the lawn with a ladder, leans it up beneath the canvas and begins to scale the wall. But the TV crews already have what they need.

“What a great party!” Kibum exclaims.

Taemin laughs, suddenly much less annoyed by Kibum. “If I’d known it was going to be this much fun, I wouldn’t have turned up late.”

“That reminds me, Taemin,” Jinki says.

“What?”

“Your ass is fired.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Taemin tries to feel it like a blow. He can’t manage it, even though it’s terrible news. He’ll have to find another job, on top of everything else. Breaking up with Naeun, for example. But all that seems distant, at least for now. The grass seems distant, and so does the house. Taemin is not even here. He is above the roof, drifting in the currents. The night air lifts beneath his wings. 

A song is about to begin.


End file.
